Sunday, January 24, 2010

"...When a law requires any group of two or more people who raise $5,000 for the purposes of making a political statement to adhere to a blizzard of federal regulations subject to fines, that law by definition chokes off the 'voices of everyday Americans' that President Barack Obama, in his ridiculous reaction to the decision yesterday, expressed outrage on behalf of. Free-speech campaign-finance enthusiasts are willing to censor or chill those small voices for the greater purpose of attempting (and largely failing) to blunt the political activity of hated Corporations (or 'Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests,' in the words of a president who has been bailing out Wall Street banks and crafting legislative deals with health insurance companies and other powerful interests for a year now). What campaign-finance supporters are not willing to do, at least most of the time, is admit that they're making any tradeoff on political expression at all."